Attached are key takeaways from the High-Level Policy Dialogue on “ECOWAS’ Renewed Compact for Peace, Governance and Regional Integration,” held on 25 August 2026, that attracted 73 participants online from government, civil society, media, academia, and regional and continental institutions, convened by WANEP.
The report synthesises the key discussions and outcomes of the High-Level Policy Dialogue, including a comparative analysis of the Renewed Compact against the Lungi Compact, areas of convergence, emerging issues for ECOWAS’ consideration, and priority recommendations from the discussions.
A specific and consequential asymmetry emerged from close reading of the Compact alongside the Dialogue’s discussion. The Compact adopts an explicit, named commitment on gender (the Presidential Declaration on Advancing Gender Parity in Political Representation),13 but contains no equivalent, explicit provision on youth in governance or socio-economic empowerment. This is not a matter of interpretation: the word “youth” does not appear in the Communiqué, despite young people constituting the majority of the region’s population. During the Dialogue, this gap surfaced repeatedly – in a call for youth participation to be tracked as a measurable indicator alongside border and security data, in a proposal that any future citizen engagement mechanism define youth engagement deliberately and distinctly from formal civil society consultation, and in the moderator’s explicit appeal that all panelists inject youth considerations into their presentations.
The 69th Ordinary Session of ECOWAS communique did not mention "youth" or include a sentence not to talk about a paragraph, despite the presentations and statements from Heads of State and Representatives. Network AID Africa did not believe this was an omission or oversight.
